‘I just came from Marina Lock. I had to pass on his last words.’
Still Hammer said nothing.
‘I should have given them to his daughter, because they were for her. But she wasn’t there. All week I’ve been imagining meeting that little girl – Christ, I don’t even know how old she is.’ He shook his head. The words were fast, his tone harsh. ‘All week I’ve been imagining telling her and dreading her asking me who I was. Terrified. Who am I? I’m the man who finished off your father. The man who made him pay for his frankly banal mistakes. But that’s OK, because this other man you may have met but probably don’t remember, he’s finished too.’ He stopped, collected himself. ‘I was relieved. I didn’t even ask where she was. Better for her that I didn’t.’
Hammer held Webster’s eye and nodded gently, bringing his hand away from his mouth.
‘How do you feel now about Gerstman?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you still feel responsible?’
‘Yes. I think I set things off. Primed the mechanism.’
‘But you went on with the case.’
Webster frowned slightly, looking closely at Hammer for a hint of his meaning.
‘I did.’
‘I’m not criticizing you. But we go on. It’s who we are. We weren’t made to leave things alone.’
‘That’s just it. I want to leave things alone. I want to leave them exactly as they are. It doesn’t matter whether that’s me or not.’
Hammer nodded. ‘I’m not saying that in time you’ll feel better. You won’t. I had a source hang himself once. Years ago, before Ikertu. To this day I don’t know why he did it and to this day it makes me feel sick. You won’t feel better. But you will see better.’
‘See what?’
‘What we do. Why we do it. That on balance we do some good.’
Not for Gerstman. Not for poor Lock. And for Inessa, he would never know.
He looked away. From the light on the bare trees outside he could tell that the day would be gone in an hour or so.
‘Take some time,’ said Hammer. ‘Come back in a month. Two. But come back.’
Webster looked down at the floor and nodded once, the merest inclination of his head.
‘Thanks, Ike. We’ll see.’
Webster walked east across the Heath. The sun shone low through an avenue of bare limes and picked out in crazed patterns the dead leaves on the ground. It was half past two, and Nancy and Daniel would be out of school in an hour. The park was quiet: some runners running, some mothers pushing prams. At the top of a hill he came into the light and there was London beneath him in a bright, cold haze. He walked along a wall of deep green holly and then down the shaded passageway to the pond. Two old men were drying themselves with white towels on the wooden deck. In the changing room he took off his coat, his shoes, his suit, his shirt and his socks, and stepped outside in his shorts. The air pinched his skin. At the end of the diving board he stopped, looked up at the sky above him, a perfect ultramarine, looked down at the green-black water below, and dived, the cold embracing his hands, his head, his tired body, shocking him awake.
First published 2011 by Mantle
This electronic edition published 2011 by Mantle
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Copyright © Chris Morgan Jones 2011
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Table of Contents
1999
2009
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EPILOGUE
An Agent of Deceit Page 32
